Sunday, February 06, 2005

1. today I went for a walk - a long one - with my mother and my dogs. yesterday also, i went for quite a decent walk. the inspiration for doing this? The catalyst? Well, my mother bought the new book by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Kyan Douglas, Beautified: Secrets for Women to Look Great and Feel Fabulous* - for my sister and not myself, I might add. And, after ridiculing it for awhile, I read a few 'chapters'. And then, what do you know: I clipped my nails, moisturised my feet, tried out some handweights that have been lying around the house and, yes, have started going for walks.

2. Ms Fits rightly points out the brilliance that was that 1980s Canadian institution, The Zit Remedy (later: The Zits). Undoubtably a landmark band of their time. However, I am reminded in viewing the picture that she posts of them, that Joey Jeremiah (the middle one, for all you Gentiles) was in fact a formative figure for me in the construction of my conception of gender.

What was there to look forward to in being a girl if you couldn't be Joey Jeremiah?

I asked the same question in relation to Prince, of course - the video clip to "Cream" appeared to me circa 1990, when I was aged five or six, in order to show me just what it meant to be a woman. After all, if you were to identify with anyone in that video, who wouldn't identity with Prince?

(With apologies for recent solipsism.)

* It's actually well-worth checking out the Amazon page for a laugh if you have some time to kill - comments include:

"Finally I have found a beauty book that not only focuses on looks, but the soul and the beauty from within as well!"

"I was especially glad to see that Kyan included a Spirit chapter and that, as a man, he recognizes that women need to be appealed to mind, body and spirit if they're to be appealed to at all"

"I fell in love with Kyan after reading this. It's very sweet. He dedicates the book to his mother, sister and grandmother!" [note to self: must write post about my mother's strange relationship to Queer Eye... link to discussion about the increasing 'use' found for gay men in mainstream culture]

Alarming, no? Perhaps not, given that it's an Amazon site. But I view these with the same morbid fascination with which I often find myself transfixed by infomercials at 2:30am, so...

2 Comments:

I flicked through that Kyan book in Borders, grinning madly. It seemed like there were a lot of windswept photos of a laughing Kyan doing activities surrounded by women. And also little fact boxes explaining what a 'chakra' is. I was so tempted to buy it. Oh, Kyan. You gotta love him.

Excuse me for commenting so long after the original post, but I just stumbled across your post.Want to know what's even better about those crazy Amazon review comments? They were written by Kyan's husband (pretending to be female). If you click on the username at the top of the review then wishlist you can see the real name he registered with.I don't know whether that's cute or scary.